Generalcomments

Dear all,

Thank you all for visiting, reading and sharing the news with me on the Fukushima Appeal Blog. I’ve kept it running since February 2012. Unfortunately, I will need some break now to attend to some of my health issues.

I would like to thank this blog and its supporters for giving me an opportunity to become a part of the slowly awakening global community during this very important time of global change. I had zero knowledge of nuclear before the Fukushima disaster, and was and still am a just normal citizen. It’s been hard to see Japan becoming a criminal, immoral and authoritarian country since the Fukushima Disaster. So it’s been a huge awakening and healing process to have a platform to speak out instead of feeling powerless, angry and sad about it. With the new secret law that is going to be introduced in Japan soon, Japanese people will need more help than at any other time in its history from foreign bloggers, doctors and scientists. Please remember Fukushima. I hope that the more difficulties we may encounter, the stronger and connected we will become to fight against injustice and be able to act from our heart space. (Mia)

Thursday, 29 November 2012

Reactor 4's spent fuel pool
has been unstable since the Fukushima disaster, and another big earthquake of
magnitude 7 or more, which could happen any time, might cause the whole
structure to collapse, leading to a fire and more explosions. There
are some other ongoing problems as well. Because of the very
high level of radioactivity on the site, workers can only stay there for a
short time and can only manage to do quick temporary jobs. They have
also been using cheap materials for things such as the tubes for containing
radioactive water, so these are not going to last for long. Another
problem concerns the storage space for radioactive water; the tanks are 89.2%
full already. Because all of the reactors need to be kept cool all
the time, lots of water is being poured over and injected into the cooling
pipes. However recent reports have suggested that the level of water
has been decreasing. Tepco (the company that owns the Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear power plants) says they don’t know why this is happening, but I
think *Prof. Koide’s answer is right – lots of water has been leaking through
many cracks in and around the reactors and their buildings since the earthquake
last year. He kept suggesting that a huge underground dam should
have been built before the radioactive water could leak into the sea and
contaminate underground water sources, but Tepco decided to postpone it
because it was too costly.

1mSv per year is a
legal limit of ionized radiation dose in Japan. This regulation was set up to
meet compromising level after the amount of ionized radiations that were
released into the air by nuclear bomb experiments.
Therefore 20mSv per year is very
high for our everyday life, especially vulnerable children. People in
Fukushima have been forced to live in such high radiation area. Therefore
it’s well beyond the imaginable level how dangerous it is for Tepco workers to
be on the site even if they wear special clothes to protect them.

4780mSv
perhour is equal to 41872.8mSv per
year!

Those workers
who work at very high radiation area are often homeless people and people who lost
their jobs. I heard that 60% of the Tepco workers are
from Fukushima prefecture that lost their jobs and houses after earthquake and
tsunami.I also heard that yakuza
(Japanese mafia) get involved to find workers in Osaka and Tokyo poor area. When people are in crisis financially, they prefer
paying off their debts rather than taking care of their body. Some of them didn’t
know what kind of job they are getting till they arrive. Some reports
said that some of them developped radiation relative symptoms such as losing hair and
teeth and white blood cell counts going down, etc. Nobody would know if they die by
receiving high dose of radiation. Those people
are not registered properly with Tepco company. Therefore there is no record to show and prove
how much radiation dose they have been getting. This is one of the examples how nuclear energy
is relying on people who are in the weak social position for dealing with such a dangerous
energy source.

At 6am this morning 10 protestors
blockaded access to EDF energy’s nuclear sites at Hinkley Point, preventing the
morning shift from starting work. 4 people in arm locks formed a barrier across
the main access road at Wick Moor Drove in a bid to prevent further ground
clearance work at the planned Hinkley C site and to protest at EDF’s plan to
extend the life of aging reactors at the Hinkley B station.Sitting beneath a banner saying
“Nuclear Power – not worth the risk” Bristol tree-surgeon Zoe Smith said, “We
want the destruction of land at the proposed Hinkley C site to stop. EDF still don’t have planning permission
for the new nuclear plant, the governments energy policy is in tatters. With
Centrica pulling out and the long awaited Electricity Reform Act delayed, there
is not even enough investment to finish the project. If the Tories fix the electricity price
for nuclear so that the project can go ahead it will leave a radioactive wastedump here for hundreds of years.”
The early morning blockade caused long tailbacks for scores of workers
contracted in to perform maintenance work on the the existing reactors at
Hinkley B, EDF have signalled their intention to re-licence the reactor again
in 2016.Bridgwater mum Nikki Clark
from South West Against Nuclear said, “Not only do we not need new nuclear, we
certainly don’t need to extend the life of the existing reactors even further.
Just this year alone reactor no 4 in the B station has scrammed at least three
times. EDF like to call these emergency shutdowns ‘unplanned outages’ but this
deliberately conceals the fact that these ageingreactors are now in a dangerous condition. In 2008 the regulators
threatened British Energy with closure of the site. The reactors do not have
any fewer cracks in the graphite core now than they did then. Do we have to
have our own Fukushima here in Somerset before we abandon this insanity and
embrace a renewables revolution in the UK?”.......

I apologize for exaggerating the safety of
radiation exposure under 100mSv/y. I am sorry for causing anxiety and distrust.I admit there was miscommunication about
protection from radiation and health risk from the emergency situation just
after 311, which was my fault….”--------------------------------------------------------------I don’t think “admitting what he did is enough.He should resign from the position as an
advisor and leave Fukushima or go to a jail which might happen because lots of citizens
in Fukushima have been accusing him. But
before he does there are lots things that he can do to help Fukushima
children.1. Helping to evacuating
children who live in high radiation zone into 1mSv/y area2. Setting up 2nd test for all the
children who developed nodules and cysts and organizing regular tests at least every
6 months.4. Bringing more GEsemiconductor equipments (it’s much better than WB counter) for
urine tests for children.I heard there
aren’t enough of them because lots of them are used to check the radiation
amount in beef!5. Informing the data of
the test to the parents, etc….

Evacuation

In Fukushima there was 2 million population including 360,000 children.

The Japanese government evacuated about 100,000 (87,000 out of 20km radios of the plant), and most of them are still in Fukushima prefecture. 65% of Fukushima prefecture became the radiation control area (a level of the contamination is more than 37,000Bq/m2), so therefore most of them are still in radioactively contaminated area unless they evacuated out of Fukushima prefecture into safe area voluntarily without any financial help from the government. Voluntary evacuees within Fukushima prefecture is 23,551, voluntary evacuees out of Fukushima prefecture is 27,776 as of 22/9/11. Even Fukushima-city which is 50km away from the plant is no longer safe, especially for children. The government statistics shows that only about 36,000(including about 20,000children, ) left Fukushima prefecture. And most of them left Fukushima Prefecture voluntarily without any financial support from the government.(October 2012)

Food Safaty

Amount of allowable ionizing radiation in foodincluding rice in Japan is now 100BQ/kg for cesium.

So this could mean that contaminated food which they can’t sell in Japan could be exported to the countries that have more relaxed regulations, such as EU countries and Thai (500) and Singapore, Hong Kong, Philippine, Vietnam, Malaysia (1000) and USA (1200).

*A Woman Who Refuses to Give In to A New Nuke PlantPlease send her a postcard: Atsuko Ogasawara, owner of “Asako House”, built in the center of the planned Ohma Nuclear Power Plant premises. She would appreciate it if you could send a post card (just with a few words is ok). Receiving a mail as much as possible helps her position to keep up anti nuclear campaign. Here is “Asako House”’s address: Ms. Atsuko Ogasawara, c/o Asako House, 396 Aza Ko-okoppe, Oh-aza Ohma, Ohma Machi, Shimokita Gun, Aomori

ＧＥＮＥＲＡＬ ＩＮＦＯＲＭＡＴＩＯＮ

Fukushima disaster is not over. It seems getting worse. Continuous leaking of ionizing radiation into the atmosphere (10million Bq/hour or more) and into the sea.. There seems no end and no solution to stop it. There is no good result in decontamination work. 27 children developed thyroid cancer. More reports of deformed babies. More people of dying of leukemia and sudden death.… Yet the Japanese Government wants all evacuees to go back to their home land by 2020. Even trying to sell nuclear to other countries, claiming it’s going to be safe. I hope information from this blog to give you views from the victim’s side of stories, health issues and related information on nuclear disaster, especially about Fukushima disaster. We should remember and learn lessons from ongoing tragedy happening in Chernobyl and Fukushima.

100% nuclear free: Japan shut down its last reactor on 15/9/13 – There has been no shortage of electricity since 3.11

*IAEA ＆ WHO downplays the danger of radiation. (Refer to the comment on Feb.2012)

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant up date news

(October 10, 2012)

The Fukushima disaster is far from over, with 10million BQ every hour of ionizing radiation (80% is coming out of reactor 2) leaking continuously into the air (as of October, 2012). No human can get near to the reactors. Even robot can only stay a couple of hours. Reactor 4 is still the most worrying, with 1535 spent fuel rods in the pool. A further6, 375 spent fuel rods are stored in a shared pool only 50 meters away from the Reactor 4. After the disaster, the maximum allowable dose of ionized radiation was raised to 250mSv/yfrom 100 mSv/y for Tepco workers (3000 workers every day) until the situation is restored to normal. Because of the dangerously high level of ionized radiation at the site, they can only work for a limited time, which makes progress slow, and more and more workers have been exposed to the maximum radiation, which means that it could be difficult to find enough people to work there continuously during the next at least 40 years work of decommissioning.

Nobody knows how and when we will be able to say that the Fukushima disaster is over.